Outside Rutgers

Fulbright Program: Fellowships and Awards

Two major types of Fulbright Fellowships are available to U.S. students who wish to go abroad as a part of their graduate studies:

Fulbright U.S. Student Program:

The Fulbright U.S. Student Grants, administered by IIE, allow graduating college seniors up to final-year Ph.D students to plan their own program of research and study in a foreign country, typically for one year. The program is open to U.S. citizens, with language requirements varying by the host country and research program. There are several different types of grants available:

Study/Research Grants: These grants are available to students in the academic and performing arts fields who would like to study or carry out research abroad. Many applicants apply for this award to support their dissertation research or a postgraduate or postdoctoral year abroad. Special Study/Research Grants are available to some participating countries Fulbright countries in Business, Journalism, and Sciences and Public Health.
English Teaching Assistantships (ETAs): Winners of an ETA spend their Fulbright year abroad serving in a classroom, helping to teach english to non-native speakers and acting as a cultural ambassador for the United States.
Fulbright-Clinton Fellowships: These fellows serve in professional public-policy positions in foreign governments while carrying out their own research or study projects.
Fulbright-mtvU Awards: These awards support projects on "contemporary or popular music as a cultural force for expression". Community outreach and documentation is a key part of this fellowship.
Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship: These awards support students as they "develop global narratives and discuss commonalities across borders". For the 2014-2015 competition, applicants should propose projects that are focused on one or more of the following themes: Biodiversity, Cities, Climate Change, Cultures, Energy, Food, Oceans, or Water. Fellows will be mentored by National Geographic editor as they use new media to enhance mutual understanding and build intercultural ties.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad:

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program supports language training and dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to twelve months. The program is open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and proposals focusing on Western Europe are not eligible. Applicants must demonstrate that they are doing research in a language other than English or their native language.

If you are planning to apply for a Fulbright U.S. Student Study/Research Grant or a Fulbright-Hays, you should plan to identify and collaborate with a researcher, institution or organization in the host country, and to secure from that collaborator a letter of support endorsing the project.

New Brunswick graduate students interested in applying for a Fulbright should let GradFund know of their interest by completing their information form. You can also visit their announcements page and calendar for a schedule of Fulbright information sessions and mock reviews, held during the spring semester.

Fulbright Foreign Student Program:

The Fulbright Program for Foreign Students is administered by binational Fulbright Commissions/Foundations or U.S. Embassies. All Foreign Student Program applications are processed by these offices.

Program eligibility and selection procedures vary widely by country. Use the drop-down menu in the website to find information about the Fulbright Program in your home country, including eligibility requirements and application guidelines.

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National Science Foundation: Grants and Fellowships

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP):

The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in fields within NSF's mission. The GRFP provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research.

SBE Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (SBE DDRIG):

The National Science Foundation's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS), Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES), National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), and the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (SMA) award grants to doctoral students to improve the quality of dissertation research. These grants provide funds for items not normally available through the student's university. Additionally, these grants allow doctoral students to undertake significant data-gathering projects and to conduct field research in settings away from their campus that would not otherwise be possible. Proposals are judged on the basis of their scientific merit, including the theoretical importance of the research question and the appropriateness of the proposed data and methodology to be used in addressing the question.

In an effort to improve the quality of dissertation research, many programs in both BCS and SES, the Research on Science and Technology Surveys and Statistics program within NCSES, and the Science of Science and Innovation Policy program in SMA accept doctoral dissertation improvement grant proposals. Requirements vary across programs, so proposers are advised to consult the relevant program's webpage for specific information and contact the program director if necessary.

Social Science Research Council: Fellowships

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is an independent, international, nonproﬁt organization founded in 1923. It fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues.

Among other fellowships and prizes, the SRRC offers:

Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship:

The Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) program supports graduate students in formulating effective doctoral dissertation research proposals that contribute to the development of interdisciplinary fields of study in the humanities and social sciences. Intended to help emerging scholars make the transition from learners to producers of knowledge, the fellowship creates a space for faculty mentorship and opens unique opportunities for both interdisciplinary and international network building.

The fellowship cycle includes spring and fall workshops designed and led by pairs of senior tenured faculty, which provide a framework for pre-dissertation research and guide proposal writing within the context of selected research fields. In the summer months, student fellows carry out exploratory field research on their topics to evaluate issues of feasibility and methods of investigation.

International Dissertation Research Fellowship:

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research on non-US topics. Eighty fellowships are awarded annually. Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $20,000. The fellowship includes participation in an SSRC-funded interdisciplinary workshop upon the completion of IDRF-funded research.

National Endowment for the Humanities:

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.

Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.

NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

Grant Opportunities

Association of American University Women: Educational Funding and Awards

AAUW has a long and distinguished history of advancing educational and professional opportunities for women in the United States and around the globe.

One of the world’s largest sources of funding for graduate women, AAUW is providing more than $3.7 million in funding for more than 245 fellowships and grants to outstanding women and nonprofit organizations in the 2013–14 academic year. Due to the longstanding, generous contributions of AAUW members, a broader community of women continues to gain access to educational and economic opportunities — breaking through barriers so that all women have a fair chance.

Fellowship and grant recipients perform research in a wide range of disciplines and work to improve their schools and communities. Their intellect, dedication, imagination, and effort promise to forge new paths in scholarship, improve the quality of life for all, and tackle the educational and social barriers facing women worldwide.

American Fellowships: American Fellowships support women scholars who are completing dissertations, planning research leave from accredited institutions, or preparing research for publication. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of scholarly excellence; quality and originality of project design; and active commitment to helping women and girls through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research.

Dissertation Fellowships offset a scholar’s living expenses while she completes her dissertation. The fellowship must be used for the final year of writing the dissertation. Applicants must have completed all course work, passed all preliminary examinations, and received approval for their research proposals or plans by the preceding November. Students holding fellowships for writing a dissertation in the year prior to the AAUW fellowships year are not eligible. Open to applicants in all fields of study. Scholars engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math fields or researching gender issues are especially encouraged to apply.

Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowships are designed to assist scholars in obtaining tenure and other promotions by enabling them to spend a year pursuing independent research. The primary purpose of the fellowship is to increase the number of women in tenure-track faculty positions and to promote equality for women in higher education. Tenured professors are not eligible.

Summer/Short-Term Research Publication Grants provide funds for women college and university faculty and independent researchers to prepare research for publication. Time must be available for eight consecutive weeks of final writing and editing in response to issues raised in critical reviews. These grants can be awarded to both tenure-track and part-time faculty, and new and established researchers. The grants are designed to assist the candidate in obtaining tenure and other promotions. Tenured professors are not eligible.

International Fellowships: International Fellowships are awarded for full-time study or research in the United States to women who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Both graduate and postgraduate studies at accredited U.S. institutions are supported. Applicants must have earned the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree by September 30, 2013, and must have applied to their proposed institutions of study by the time of the application. Up to five fellowships are renewable for a second year.

Recipients are selected for academic achievement and demonstrated commitment to women and girls. Recipients return to their home countries to become leaders in business, government, academia, community activism, the arts, and sciences.

Five College Consortium: Fellowship Program

Five College Fellowships offer year-long residencies for doctoral students completing dissertations. The program supports scholars from under-represented groups and/or scholars with unique interests and histories whose engagement in the Academy will enrich scholarship and teaching.

Each Fellow will be hosted within an appropriate department or program at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College or Smith College. (At Smith, recipients hold a Mendenhall Fellowship.) Applications are to the program, not to a specific hosting campus.

This is a residential fellowship. Fellows are provided research and teaching mentors and connected through the consortial office to resources and scholars across the five campuses, which include UMass Amherst. The office also supports meetings of the Fellows throughout the year.

The fellowship includes a $30,000 stipend, a research grant, health benefits, office space, housing or housing assistance, and library privileges at all five campuses belonging to the consortium.

While the award places primary emphasis on completion of the dissertation, most fellows teach at their hosting institution, but never more than a single one-semester course.

Ford Foundation: Fellowships

Through its Fellowship Programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.

Eligibility to apply for a Ford fellowship is limited to:

All citizens, nationals and permanent residents (holders of a Permanent Resident Card) of the United States, and individuals granted deferred action status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, regardless of race, national origin, religion, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation,
Individuals with evidence of superior academic achievement (such as grade point average, class rank, honors or other designations),
Individuals committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level.

Receipt of the fellowship award is conditioned upon each awardee providing satisfactory documentation that he or she meets the eligibility requirements.

For information regarding level-specific eligibility requirements, stipends, and other program information for each of the three levels of the Fellowship program, please access the fact sheet for the program level of your interest, predoctoral, dissertation or postdoctoral.

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Open Society Foundations: Fellowships

According to their mission, the Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant societies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people.

They award grants, scholarships, and fellowships throughout the year. Check their website, start with the form at left to explore their published grant opportunities and view eligibility requirements and application guidelines.

Open Society Fellowship:

The Open Society Fellowship was founded in 2008 to support individuals pursuing innovative and unconventional approaches to fundamental open society challenges. The fellowship funds work that will enrich public understanding of those challenges and stimulate far-reaching and probing conversations within the Open Society Foundations and in the world.

A fellowship project might identify a problem that has not previously been recognized, develop new policy ideas to address familiar problems, or offer a new advocacy strategy. Project themes should cut across at least two areas of interest to the Open Society Foundations. Among these are human rights, government transparency, access to information and to justice, and the promotion of civil society and social inclusion.

Fellows are expected to take full advantage of the foundations’ expansive reach and work to bring new people and fresh ideas into the organization’s ambit. Successful projects should push the boundaries of current thinking and carry lessons that can be applied to a variety of settings. Fellows may produce a variety of work products, including publications such as books, reports, or blogs; innovative public-education projects; or the launch of new campaigns or organizations. They may also engage in activities such as hosting panel discussions, traveling to conferences, participating in policy debates, and aggressively promoting their ideas in public venues.

The fellowship does not fund enrollment for degree or non-degree study at academic institutions, including dissertation research.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation: Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies

The Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies encourages original and significant research about women that crosses disciplinary, regional, or cultural boundaries. Previous Fellows have explored such topics as transnational religious education for Muslim women, the complex gender dynamics of transidentity management, women’s electoral success across racial and institutional contexts, women’s sports, militarism and the education of American women, and the relationship between family commitments and women’s work mobility. The WW Women’s Studies Fellowships support the final year of dissertation writing for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose work addresses topics of women and gender in interdisciplinary and original ways.

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation funds a major program of graduate fellowships in the humanities and social sciences. These fellowships support students in the final stages of doctoral study whose work offers significant potential for advancing academic scholarship related to ethics and/or religion. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation administers all aspects of this program, including a rigorous national competition for Newcombe Fellowships each year.

P.E.O. International: Scholarships

P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship (IPS) Fund was established in 1949 to provide scholarships for international women students to pursue graduate study in the United States and Canada.

Council for European Studies: Fellowships

CES Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowships: The Council for European Studies invites eligible graduate students to apply for the 2014 CES Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowships. Each fellowship includes a $4,000 stipend, the opportunity to publish in Perspectives on Europe, a semi-annual journal of the Council for European Studies, and other professional development activities.

CES Pre-Dissertation Fellowships fund two months’ travel to Europe to conduct the exploratory phase of a projected dissertation project in the social sciences or humanities which will require a subsequent stay in Europe. The program is intended to facilitate the transition from coursework to fieldwork, and to enable students to make rapid progress in refining their initial ideas into a feasible, interesting, and fundable doctoral project. Recipients are expected to use CES support to lay such research groundwork as determining the availability of archival materials, scouting possible field sites, testing research design, securing ties with relevant European scholars or institutions. Typically, they submit applications for dissertation research funding soon after completing CES-funded preliminary research.

Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowships in European Studies: The Council for European Studies (CES) invites eligible graduate students to apply for the Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowships in European Studies. Each fellowship includes a $25,000 stipend, paid in six (6) bi-monthly installments over the course of the fellowship year, as well as assistance in securing reimbursements or waivers in eligible health insurance and candidacy fees.

Winners of the Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowships will also be expected to participate in a number of professional development activities organized by the Council for European Studies for the benefit of its fellows and designed to support early career development. These activities include: publishing in Perspectives on Europe, a semi-annual journal of the Council for European studies; presenting at the International Conference of Europeanists, hosted by the Council for European Studies; and participating in several digital and in-person career development seminars and/or workshops.

The Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowships are funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Hobart and William Smith Colleges: Fisher Center Pre-Doctoral Fellowship

In keeping with the Fisher Center’s mission of supporting research and dialogue about gender through curricular, programmatic, and scholarly projects, the Fisher Center Steering Committee announces a call for applications for their 2014-2015 Fisher Center Predoctoral Fellowship. They seek dissertation scholars and advanced candidates for the MFA whose work critically engages the terms of their theme, Campus War Machine: Sex and Debt. They are especially interested in candidates who would contribute to the diversity of the campus. Click here to download the 2014-15 Call for Applications.

Yale University: Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship

This traditionally biennial fellowship provides a year of support to a graduate student, from an institution other than Yale, who is writing a dissertation in LGBT Studies, with lesbian studies as its focus. The winner receives a stipend, and residence in New Haven and participation in LGBTS is required during the tenure of the fellowship. The next Sarah Pettit Fellowship will start in fall of 2015.

The Sarah Pettit Fund was established in 2003 as a permanent endowment to honor and perpetuate the memory of lesbian activist Sarah Pettit, who earned her BA from Yale in 1988. Pettit died in 2003 in the midst of a high profile career as a writer, editor, and LGBTQ advocate. She was for many years the editor-in-chief and vice president of OUT Magazine, which she co-founded in 1992. In 1999, she was appointed the senior editor of Newsweek’s Arts and Entertainment section. She served on the advisory board of the New York Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project.

National Women's Studies Association: Scholarships

NWSA Graduate Scholarship:

NWSA will award $1,000 to a student who, in the fall of the year of the award, will be engaged in the research or writing stages of a Master's Thesis or Ph.D. Dissertation in the interdisciplinary field of women's studies. The research project must enhance the NWSA mission. This opportunity is open to current NWSA members.

Two letters of recommendation must be emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. no later than May 15 of each calendar year.

Deadline: May 15 each calendar year.

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